


if you're homesick

by seventhswan



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Anime Spoilers, F/F, Grief, Loss, Post-Series, Reference to Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-08-08
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2104179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>When she falls asleep at the table, Homura dreams of Madoka’s seeds tumbling in the wind over the city, and Madoka trees sprouting everywhere – in the sewage grates, between the stacks in the libraries, sprouting from underneath cars, rupturing concrete. She imagines them tall, beautiful, brilliant green and foaming with pink blossoms.</p>
</blockquote><p>Homura lives the life left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you're homesick

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the anime series. I haven’t read any of the manga or seen Rebellion, so this takes no notice of anything which happens in those. 
> 
> Trigger warnings: the character death warned for in the tags does not happen on-screen – rather, this story contains reference to a canonically dead character. Additionally, although Madoka isn’t really “dead”, this story deals with themes of grief and loss.
> 
> Title from Birdy’s **People Help the People**.

After Walpurgisnacht – after the _last_ Walpurgisnacht – Homura doesn’t go home. When she wakes alone in this brave new universe, she gets to her feet and walks right across the city, to the apartment that used to be Mami’s. On the way a truck sprays up enough water to splatter her all up her left side. The heel breaks off one of her shoes. She doesn’t stop, and she doesn’t look back.

Mami’s bedroom yields an old, worn pair of pyjamas with frayed cuffs. The top is too big in the chest, and the legs are too long, so Homura folds them up, and then pulls the cuffs down over her hands.

She waters Mami’s plants and warms her feet under the kotatsu, and then, while she watches the sun rise in the sky outside, she drinks tea from Madoka’s cup. She closes her eyes and imagines the shape of Madoka’s mouth left behind on the rim, an invisible kissprint, a perfect brand. 

Homura breathes the air in Mami’s apartment and thinks of the moments Madoka spent there, every Madoka, all her Madokas – pictures Madoka reflected in the light from Mami’s smiling golden face, the halo of her hair. Madoka breathed this air once, and now Homura breathes it. 

There’s a breeze from the window and Homura feels as though she can see Madoka’s particles being stirred and swept out, catching the wind like dandelion seeds. 

When she falls asleep at the table, Homura dreams of Madoka’s seeds tumbling in the wind over the city, and Madoka trees sprouting everywhere – in the sewage grates, between the stacks in the libraries, sprouting from underneath cars, rupturing concrete. She imagines them tall, beautiful, brilliant green and foaming with pink blossoms.

After Homura wakes, she wipes down the table and puts the cup by the sink, as though she will ever wash it. 

|

Every morning she wakes with the red ribbon curled around her fist. She gets up, she showers, she ties the ribbon tight and clips it in place, under the rest of her hair so it won’t show. She tweaks the bow until it’s perfect.

She goes to school. There’s a locket under her uniform with a terrible, tiny portrait that Homura drew from memory. There are no pictures of Madoka now, but Homura can see her every time she closes her eyes, smiling and bathed in white light, one hand reaching out.

The Madoka in the locket is a crude, wobbly attempt, and Homura never even looks at it. 

She just needs to know it’s there.

|

The messages start small. 

One night, Homura is at her desk – Mami’s desk – staring at her English homework when the breeze from the open window stirs against her cheek, as though someone with terribly weak breath is breathing on her. 

Homura scratches her cheek and shifts in her chair, out of the draft.

|

When Mami’s plants don’t die under her hands, it gives Homura enough confidence to try something new. She buys a small rosebush, and plants it in a container out on Mami’s balcony. It’s squat, bare and ugly, but Homura is determined to try her best.

For weeks, the bush resists all her efforts. She spends time talking to it, tirelessly feeding, pruning, trying to angle it for the best sunlight. She brings it in out of the wind. She plays Mozart on the radio. The bush just ails, losing color and gloss.

She comes home in a rain shower after a terrible Tuesday, the ends of her hair dripping, her umbrella a broken mess, one spoke hideously disfigured by a sudden bracing gust.

The rosebush on the sill is suddenly straight, tall, glowing; heavy and ripe with velvet blooms, miraculously transfigured from that morning. Homura drops the mangled mess of the umbrella to the ground, drips her way across the kitchen, gathers the bush gently towards her, and sobs into the sink.

|

Mami’s fridge has a whole clutter of brightly colored magnets littering it – goofy little animals, the famous London red buses, a promotional one from some whiskey company. There are several English letters, too – big and colourful and childish-looking. Mami used them to practice her English in the mornings, when she was standing waiting for the water to boil.

Several weeks after the rosebush began to bloom, Homura stumbles in from her bed to see _I LOV YOU_ picked out from the cloud of letters. She drops the milk and it spreads, slowly, across the floor, until it’s a white lake lapping at her toes.

|

“I miss you,” Homura says out loud that night, after she’s stumbled her way through a day of school feeling as though she could see straight through everyone. Her voice shakes.

There’s no response, but she isn’t expecting one. This is more than she ever thought she would get, anyway.

She cooks dinner, and opens the window. When she’s washing up at the sink, the radio turns on by itself. The song is sweet, and low, and old - a lullaby. 

“I wish you were here,” Homura says again, to the air in the apartment.

She feels foolish, but she tries to think of what Madoka would want her to do. So she leaves her dishes in the sink and, in her apron, draws close to the center of the floor. She clasps her hands to her heart, and she begins to dance.

The song plays on, and on, and on.


End file.
